


Purple (?) Eyes

by Lalalalalalala



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, I've been wanting to post something for a while, M/M, i wrote it a while ago and tbh i have no idea where i was going with this, let me know what you think if that is something that you want to do, so here is my first thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 16:26:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14918819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lalalalalalala/pseuds/Lalalalalalala
Summary: The lovechild of "Once Upon a Dream" from Sleeping Beauty, and "Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop" by Landon Pigg.





	Purple (?) Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I've been wanting to start writing a bit more, but had no idea where to start. I... still have no idea where to start, but here I am doing it anyway (The only way to get started is to start and all that jazz).  
> As the tags suggest, I wrote this a while ago and have subsequently forgotten what the heck it was going to be, so I have made the Most Logical Choice and decided to post it as is. 
> 
> Please let me know if you have any feedback/suggestions/thoughts/offers of matrimony/etc.

Top teeth anchored in bottom lip, Keith hunched over this morning’s creation. He was rushing to put to paper what he couldn’t convey in words, trying to capture the hazy sweetness of the dream that he’d just woken up from. 

Then he paused, body tense and poised over the half-finished drawing as he fought to remember the dream, gaze rapidly moving over but not really focusing on the room around him. 

Normally he wasn’t this invested in dreams. While Keith was open to the idea of the strange and unexplainable (some might even say that he was slightly too open, which was just rich coming from Pidge), he drew the line at finding hidden meaning in his brain’s nightly film reel. Still, this one had been different. It had felt different, different from the blank tiredness that had been covering him like some kind of oppressive blanket for the past week. In this dream, or maybe because of it, he’d felt the strangest mixture of uncomplicated joy and feverish excitement.

Gripping his pen more tightly, Keith strained against the blankness creeping in around the edges of his mind, but the dream was already out of reach. Giving up for now, Keith uncurled his spine and leaned back against the headboard of his bed with a sigh. His lips curled slightly upwards in a sardonic smile, and he tossed his sketch pad and pen onto his bedside table. As Keith did so, he caught a glimpse of his alarm clock and his eyes widened in shock.

\- - -

One hour later, Keith shot out of class past a grumbling professor. Why couldn’t his first class be a lecture? There was just no sneaking in twenty minutes late to a class of fifteen. 

Now wasn’t the time to dwell on passive-aggressive professors, though. Now was the time for some sorely needed caffeine. Keith maneuvered his way through the crush of students, quickly making his way from the hall to the door to the outside world. He kept his head down, focusing on the crunch of the gravel pathway beneath his feet and idly mulling over the day so far. 

He’d gotten to class late and hadn’t had time to get his coffee fix beforehand, and he hadn’t had time to get coffee because he’d been drawing, and he’d been drawing because… Suddenly someone behind Keith made an impatient huffing noise and he realized that, lost in thought, he’d paused with his hand on the doorknob. Whispering a sarcastic “sorry” under his breath, Keith pulled the door to Castle Coffee open and stepped inside. 

It was fairly crowded, which wasn’t much of a feat in such a small café, but it still wasn’t what Keith was used to with his usual early-morning coffee runs. Still, he joined the line and shuffled along until he was able to make his order, and from there he went to claim one of the few unoccupied tables left. 

The line was pretty long, so Keith reasoned that he had some time to scroll through his email or something while he waited. As he dug through his bag though, his hand paused over his sketchpad. Keith ended up pulling that out instead, and he flipped through it idly until he came to his sketch from this morning. It was an amorphous, abstract series of interlocking shapes, which wasn’t something that he normally sketched outside of class, but he’d been trying to capture a feeling and it hadn’t felt like something that would translate into anything concrete. More than anything else it needed some color. But what colors would bring the sketch together and evoke the right emotions? What were the ‘right’ emotions? Frustration creased Keith’s brow as he strained, once again, to remember his dream. 

“KEITH!” A harried sounding voice shattered his concentration. Keith’s head snapped towards the source of the noise, and met the eyes of an exasperated barista. 

“Your drink is ready, dude,” the guy said, leaning exaggeratedly against the counter with one hand and waving Keith’s drink around with the other. Keith quickly put his sketchpad down and made his way over to the barista, who straightened up and looked slightly surprised as Keith got closer. 

“Sorry about that, guess I was a bit distracted,” Keith said gruffly as he took the cup from the other boy. 

Before he could turn away though, the barista leaned in a bit, elbows propped on the high countertop as he looked into Keith’s eyes and said, “Not a problem. You have such pretty eyes, though. I wish you would focus on me that hard.” Someone behind the boy elbowed him and muttered something. When the barista looked back though, the sheepish but warm look in his eyes suddenly had Keith remembering his dream from the night before with perfect clarity. 

___________

It had been a long day for Lance, even before his unexpected afternoon shift at Castle Coffee. His alarm hadn’t gone off, so he’d been left scrambling to get to his 8am class on time. The professor had had the audacity to interrupt class with a lecture on timeliness when he’d slunk into the lecture hall seven minutes late, and then his phone had gone off fifteen minutes after that with a text from Allura asking if he was free to work that afternoon. 

So now Lance was on Professor Iverson’s shit list, which was horrible considering the fact that Iverson was a professor who taught multiple courses necessary for his major. “Goodbye joy, goodbye future,” Lance grumbled under his breath, stumbling slightly as he tried to kick pebbles into the gutter and walk to work at the same time. 

Generally, Lance enjoyed working here. It paid slightly better than minimum wage, his boss Allura was nice, and he got to work with his best friend Hunk more often than not. Today, though, he just knew that nothing good could happen.

Slouching his way into the café, Lance graced Hunk with a scowl. Hunk glanced up and, noting Lance’s expression, offered up a hesitant, “Heeeey, Lance. How’s it going, buddy?” Lance’s body tensed up in preparation, ready to deliver a dramatic retelling of the tragedy that was his life, but before he could let loose a single sensationalized syllable, Allura emerged from the backroom. 

Spotting Lance standing near the doorway, Allura motioned him over to her side. “Come along, Lance! The lunch rush is almost upon us, and you’re still not in uniform.” Grumbling under his breath, Lance brushed past Hunk who patted him on the shoulder in consolation. 

Ten minutes later found Lance in the Middle Of It™, rushing to take orders and keep things running smoothly behind the counter with Hunk and Allura. Despite outward appearances to the contrary, Lance was in his element. In the midst of everything he’d forgotten about the first half of his day- all he could really do was ride the wave of the afternoon and sing along to the radio- so aside from a few minor annoyances his day was looking up. 

Of course things started to go downhill again when someone named “Keith” wouldn’t pick up their coffee. 

Lance saw that things were getting a bit backed up under the “Pick up here” sign on the other end of the counter, so he hurried over and started picking up cups and calling out names. One by one, people either picked up their heads from their phones or hurried over from their seats in the hunt for java.

The last cup didn’t seem to belong to anyone, though. Despite his perfectly cultivated vocal tone (just loud enough to be heard over the music and chatter, not loud enough to deafen those around him), no one responded to the name “Keith”. At first Lance wondered if he was reading the name wrong. He proceeded to try out a few creative pronunciations of the name just in case. Soon, though, the combination of the remainder of the lunch rush, this orphaned coffee, and his dwindling amusement at pronouncing “Keith” as “Keef” had Lance remembering his earlier belief that nothing good would come of today. 

Deciding to give it one last try, Lance plastered a faux apologetic look on his face, quickly apologizing in advance to the people in his immediate vicinity before half shouting, half screeching, “KEITH!” 

Someone seated near the rear of the café jolted up in alarm, and, feeling like he deserved a brief moment of bitchiness, Lance leaned against the counter and waved the drink in this “Keith’s” direction. “Your drink is ready, dude,” Lance told him. He tried to avoid letting the true extent of his annoyance show, because sneering was not only “unprofessional, really Lance”, but it was also likely to cause wrinkles. His expression shifted though as Keith made his way over, because… damn. Was he really pulling off a mullet right now, or was Lance hallucinating?

He vaguely heard Keith offering up an apology as he took the cup, but Lance was more focused on appreciating the vision in front of him than dwelling on the petty grievances of ten seconds ago. This guy was the kind of pretty that was idiocy-inducing. Were those purple eyes? Either way they were so nice that Lance wanted to command their full attention. 

A sharp elbow finding its way into his side and a muttered “Brain to mouth filter, Lance” told him that some of his thought process must have made its way out of his mouth. 

Leveling a rueful look at the dark-haired boy, Lance was surprised to see Keith’s expression turn soft and sweet. Maybe he was just really into shitty pickup lines? Somehow it didn’t seem like that was the case, though. Even as Lance maintained eye contact, the other boy just stayed kind of gooey. 

This was the most pleasantly confused Lance had ever been. 

_________

The realization that Keith's weird was showing ended up playing out a lot like falling in love- slowly, then all at once. He was still maintaining eye contact with the barista, still feeling vaguely fuzzy feelings from his dream, when suddenly it occurred to him that he’d just responded to being hit on by staring at the boy with what was an undoubtedly dopey face. 

Stammering profusely, Keith gave up on seeming like a functioning member of society and turned away, moving so violently that some coffee shot through the tiny hole in the lid of his cup and hit him in the face. Keith blinked rapidly get rid of the burning feeling in his eye as he scurried back to his table by the back of the room, suddenly grateful for whatever distance he could put between himself and his failed life choices. 

At least one good thing could come out of his embarrassment, though. Keith quickly sat down in front of his still open sketchbook, set his coffee on the table, and pulled the sketchbook into his lap. Setting aside his mortification was easier than expected as he pulled his mushy-barista-feelings to the forefront of his mind. Allowing them to guide his hand, Keith added color to his sketch, intertwining soft blues and purples and adding jagged accents of red to the page in front of him.

**Author's Note:**

> was this going to be a soulmate au? i have no idea. thanks for reading it though, lol


End file.
